Slashdot Mirror
Studio Ghibli Animation Software Going "Open Source"; Details Pending (toonzpremium.com)
Michael Tiemann writes: Digital Video, the makers of TOONZ, and DWANGO, a Japanese publisher, announced today they have signed an agreement for the acquisition by Dwango of Toonz, an animation software which was independently developed by Digital Video (Rome, Italy). Digital Video and Dwango have agreed to close the deal under the condition Dwango will publish and develop an Open Source platform based on Toonz (OpenToonz). Effective Saturday March 26, the TOONZ Studio Ghibli Version will be made available to the animation community as a free download. Not yet clear is which existing open source license will be used for the software, if any. If it is properly licensed as open source software, then we should all celebrate this event by drawing unicorns and rainbows. If not, many will be dis-spirited away. Animation World Network also reports this news, and adds a few more details, but is similarly vague about the license terms. I hope the terms are such that we'll soon see Toonz in media-centric Linux distros, and in widespread classroom use.
In addition, OpenToonz will also include effects developed by Dwango that utilize its artificial intelligence technology, and a plug-in feature that enables anybody to add original effects to OpenToonz. ...
With the aim of building an environment where research labs and the animated film industry actively cooperate with each other, Dwango hopes to develop a platform via OpenToonz to help the animation industry instantly apply various animation production-related research results acquired in the field.
If it's BSD we'll see animation houses suck up any research output and not contribute much of anything back.
Multi-award winning animated movies from east Asia. Studio Ghibli is basically Disney with fewer lines of merchandise and theme parks.
...if you like Japanese culture and haven't seen Totoro (or is it "My Neighbor Totoro"), do so - you won't regret it.
You must be very proud. Thanks to people like you Ghibli are going to stop making movies entirely:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11001081/Studio-Ghibli-may-stop-making-films.html
Of course, Ghibli were one of the more fortunate studios and other people in the industry are in far worse a state. The animators work absurdly long hours for low pay and the studios are permanently on the verge of going out of business. Scum like you always come up with an excuse like, "all the money goes to the rich executives", but the reality is there is no money to go to the "rich executives". AnimeNewsNetwork post the anime Blu-ray sales each week and the sales are generally terrible:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-11-24/japan-animation-blu-ray-disc-ranking-november-16-22/.95738
Bear in mind that those are the Blu-rays that sold well, and many releases sell in the hundreds. Four thousand Blu-rays is considered a success, and titles can get a sequel even with sales as little as 3200 per volume. Blu-rays sales are the main source of income for the anime industry and the only reason it can stay in business is because of the occasional hit title that sells 20K-40K per volume.
Ultimately the reason animators are working 16 hour days six days per week is become of scum like you who enjoy the product they offer but refuse to pay for it. As if you couldn't sink any lower you then post on forums boasting that you pirate anime.
Please just kill yourself. The world would be a better place without people like you who just want to take and refuse to contribute, even when an industry is in desperate need of money.
you would put a freeform criminal claim in to a magistrate as "an information".
(source: I'm a lawyer).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Ghibli might stop producing feature films, but I don't think they've yet confirmed that. The reason why they've been on hiatus has nothing to do with piracy or sales. It's because they've lost Hayao Miyazaki. He retired from feature films in 2013, and he was Ghibli's breadwinner and most famous filmmaker, almost being synonymous with Ghibli itself (Isao Takahata is the other famous filmmaker at Ghibli, and he will probably not make another film either). Pricess Mononoke became the highest grossing film of all time in Japan until it was bested by Titanic, but then Miyazaki came back with Spirited Away which became the new highest grossing film of all time and still remains so (both films also won the Picture of the Year Oscar-equivalent in Japan, i.e. won against even live action films, until animated films were shoved into their own award category). His last film The Wind Rises was the highest grossing of 2014.
Ghibli has apparently had trouble developing new talent, and they've been too invested in Miyazaki. On the other hand, Ghibli was founded by Miyazaki and Takahata (and producer Toshio Suzuki) so they could make the films they wanted to. They probably just don't know where Ghibli should go from here, or if it should go anywhere (as an animation studio).
You're conflating two very different things here: Ghibli and the television anime industry. Ghibli is a mega successful household name with their own museum that brings in a lot of revenue, they own their productions (not always the case for anime studios), and as a film producer they make most of their money at the box office. In terms of home video sales they're in a very different league than TV anime. Late night TV anime relies a lot on disc sales (there's no ad revenue), but there's relatively few people who buy them since they're expensive, there's too many shows on the air, and most people just don't watch late night anime at all. Daytime anime is watched by many more people, but disc sales are not important.
Low wages in the anime industry (at least in the early stages of one's career) go back all the way to the beginning of anime and have nothing to do with piracy. People don't even have to buy anime in Japan as they can just watch it for free on TV. But for the relatively small number of serious fans that isn't enough, so they buy Blu-rays and merchandise. A show can also profit by making people go buy the source material it's based on (e.g. sales for the KonoSuba series of light novels tripled thanks to the recent anime adaptation).
Sorry to bug you but I can't help but notice the replies you've received. I'd speculate that it is ignorance, perhaps willful ignorance, but premised on very Western views. Were I a more paranoid person, I'd speculate that they'd based their beliefs on propaganda.
Japan's culture and history is largely based on a feudal caste system with inherent bias, prejudice, and inherited status. There's speculation about the changes but, at the same time, they've still got people *actively* engaging in ancestral worship with regards to war criminals. They were forced, at gunpoint, to open up their society.
As an outsider looking in, and doing so objectively (I think), it appears that there are still a number of people, people with power, who resent that. That, coupled with a society that appears to be rather conformational and largely disinterested in externalities and you have a volatile situation that could make drastic changes in less than a generation.
Before people guess, I've *been* to Japan more than once and have enjoyed the time and the people. I did lose relatives in WWII to the Japanese and had others who barely survived their capture by the Japanese. However, I was not there and I'd like to think that I can still be objective as I do not hold any particular grudges with this. In fact, if I did then I'd say nothing and hope that their society imploded or turned aggressive and was annihilated. I wish that on nobody.
If I could make any changes, it would be to get their average citizen interested in both politics and things that go on outside of their borders. They might also wish to look internally and see what they can do about those people who still deny, or minimize, things like Unit 731, prisoner abuses to numerous to mention, the Rape of Nanking, sexual slavery of Koreans, chemical warfare tests on living Chinese, and treachery. Then, they may wish to just be open about the way their history played out. No, life was not good for the average person and that lasted well into the 20th century. *sighs*
It's not hard, as an individual, to get past that sort of stuff. I've no idea how to do it en masse... I do wish them luck but, as an outsider, it really does look largely dysfunctional and based on false premises. Seriously, worshiping war criminals? In the 1970s the people doing so were old. I see it today, when it does make the media, and I've noticed that they're not a bunch of old veterans any more. It's a mix of a few old people and a whole lot of young people.* It was sort of understandable when it was just a bunch of old vets. I can understand and accept that. I know what it's like to carry a firearm and (sort of) fight for your country.
* How does that even happen? Seriously, I don't get it. What did they tell those kids to get them to engage in that ancestor worship and laying wreaths on war criminal's tombs? These aren't speculated criminals. These are accused and tried criminals who are responsible for atrocities, by any definition of the word, and were sentenced to death in some instances. It was understandable, if regrettable, when it was the old and dying who still kept them in their memory. How the hell did they get kids to keep this tradition up? Do the kids not know? Do they not understand? Have they been told the truth?
Yes, those are questions. I have no idea what the answers are. Your opinion is, of course, valued and you may well know what I do not. I could go on but I'm lazy tonight. ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."